Danny Rimer: Always thinking as an outsider

Danny Rimer of Index Ventures may live in London, but he's still considered one of the valley's hottest VC stars thanks to huge home runs such as TellMe Networks in Mountain View, whose first personal check came from Rimer (it just sold to Microsoft for $800 million).

Rimer credits his track record to his world view, one shaped by his upbringing in Geneva, where his Canadian father owned a brokerage business, as well as by his Harvard education and his seven years on the West Coast, working first for investment bank Hambrecht & Quist and then as a venture capitalist with the Barksdale Group, which he left in 2002 to join Index Ventures's founder, his brother Neil.

"In Geneva, I was seen as an outsider," said Rimer. "In the U.S., I was considered Eurotrash. And in London, I'm seen as an American," partly because he still visits Silicon Valley every six weeks to meet with three local startups on whose boards he sits, including the interactive advertising agency Spot Runner.

The outcome of that moving around? "I'm always thinking as an outsider, and I'm always mindful of whether a company can be impactful on a global basis. Frankly, I'm paranoid about anyone anywhere who could be a competitive threat."

He also is immune to "group think," said Andi Gutmans, founder of Zend, a Cupertino start-up that counts Rimer among its directors. "Maybe because Danny isn't tied to one geography, he's much more willing to take risks than other VCs I've seen.

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The founders of Internet telephony company Skype concluded the same, accepting funding from Index and welcoming Rimer to their board - despite interest from many top U.S. firms - just one year before its sale to eBay for $2.6 billion.

If Swedish open-source database company MySQL goes public as is widely expected, Rimer's record for investing in successful companies will be hard to match - especially for a 36-year-old.